Calin BaenenSo, I made a Tweet not too long before I made this post, and it was me showing off my first OpenGL project using Piston.
And I attached two images.
One of the target folder, with the program over it:
And the other of the src folder, so you could see how the app was structured:
The point of this post is to talk about how my experience was, and even as someone who just started, would recommend Piston.
So. What was the project I made in Rust?
A game in-development.
I'm working on RuntDeale, a game inspired by (but NOT an AU of) Undertale, an 2.5D RPG bullet-hell game.
What do I have so far? -- I have a white background with a purple square that can be moved using the W, A, S, and D keys.
So far, my experience has been okay.
I've been able to create a window of a variable size and title, have been able to draw a shape to the screen, provide custom colors, and rotate a shape.
Now, how much code does it take to do all that?
With Piston, this much:
# Total lines: 234
# Compact: 135
# CptLns: (12, 28, 2, 11, 1, 27, 54)
#
# Avg lines: 033
# Compact: 019
src/
rd_events/
gameloop.rs # Lines: 23
buttons.rs # Lines: 49
mod.rs # Lines: 02
rd_utils/
colors.rs # Lines: 27 (not all lines are required)
mod.rs # Lines: 01
main.rs # Lines: 39 (some lines are whitespace)
app.rs # Lines: 93
So relative to what I've seen before, that's not a lot of code.
Just a few lines for making the window and event register, a fair bit of lines to rendering the the background and drawing the shape at its given X, Y position, and a small bit for detecting the key-presses and updating the X and Y position.
So. Why do I like Piston so far?
It's concise, and it's been (for the most part) straightforward.
Check out their homepage, https://piston.rs, they even show off some great examples of how their library has been used!
